Alien Storm Review

It's Golden Axe with robots.

The following review is for a retro game as it appears on the Wii's Virtual Console. There may be some slight differences between the title and its original home console version, and the opinion offered is based on today's standards &#Array; it is not meant to be taken as a critique of the product as it existed in the year in which it was originally released.

It hadn't occured to me just how many different side-scrolling brawlers there were in the late '80s and early '90s. Like most gamers, I had a few foundational franchises in my mind in that era &#Array; Double Dragon, Final Fight, Streets of Rage. But there were plenty of others besides those few, including this forgotten release from SEGA. Alien Storm is a brawler that has a lot of things in common with SEGA's other entries into the genre around that time, especially those that started off in the arcade and then came home to the Genesis, like Altered Beast and Golden Axe. And while there are a few unique elements here that those other efforts didn't have, it's ultimately understandable why Alien Storm is a game that's largely been lost in the crowd and forgotten over the years.

It's a classic case of extraterrestrial invasion in Alien Storm, as an everyman's city falls victim to the attack of a swarm of ugly-looking blobs and slugs from outer space. Three would-be heroes take up the call to arms to defend the town &#Array; Karen, armed with a flamethrower; Garth, equipped with a lightning gun; and Scooter, a sentient robot who wields some kind of energy whip. The trio call themselves the Alien Busters, and set out to rid the streets of the otherworldly scum.

All three heroes handle identically, which isn't what your first guess would be going in &#Array; other brawlers with diversified casts, like the Streets of Rage series, almost always make their individual protagonists control in unique ways. But here, Karen, Garth and Scooter all move at the same rate, run and tumble at the same speed and offer the same attack range when fighting foes. Though each character uses a different style of weapon, it turns out to just be a cosmetic difference &#Array; they're all running on the same engine under the hood.

A robot kicking an alien in the face. What's not to love?

There's more cosmetic difference to be seen, too, in each fighter's screen-clearing special attack. Karen calls down a nuclear missile to set the screen ablaze, Garth summons a rapid-firing chopper, and Scooter just causes himself to self-destruct, leaving his head lying on the ground until a fresh robot body appear and reattaches it. Again, all of these attacks look different but are functionally the same.

This should all be starting to sound familiar to fans of the Golden Axe franchise, because those games did the exact same thing &#Array; they offered up a "diverse" cast of playable characters, each armed with different weapons and magic spells, but in the end every fighter functioned pretty much identically. It's easy to see, then, what Alien Storm really is &#Array; Golden Axe with robots.

Even the overall style of the graphics and music seem to spin-off from that same Golden Axe vibe, vintage SEGA as it is. But Alien Storm does set itself apart with a couple of altered-playstyle level designs that show up every once in a while &#Array; the first-person shooter sequences, and the "run-and-gun" stages.

The FPS sequences pop up fairly frequently, and shift the perspective to behind your weapon as you blast aliens in enclosed areas like warehouses and convenience stores. The baddies hide behind stacks of boxes and cereal aisles, then leap out at you &#Array; trying to strike the screen in the foreground. It's reminiscent of other SEGA shooters, like the recently released Ghost Squad. Not a bad diversion in-between brawling stages.

And the "run-and-gun" levels are scenes in which your character is constantly running forward, to the right side of the screen, in a forced-scrolling shooter kind of way. You can leap over enemies and change your position relative to the constantly-moving ground underneath your feet, but it's mostly a game of dodging and blasting as more and more enemies pour into your range, begging to be blasted.

These differently-played styles of levels break up the monotony of what is otherwise a straightforward, fairly slow-paced brawler and help to keep your interest elevated to the point where you'll likely want to see the fight through to the end. It doesn't take long to get there, as the game is only eight levels long, but still it's fairly fun while it lasts. You can, of course, also play co-op with two players simultaneously busting aliens at the same time. And that's always a bonus with a brawler.

The Verdict

In the end, Alien Storm ends up being a little less forgettable than you might have guessed. It's Golden Axe with robots, yes, but it also mixes things up a bit with its inclusion of the occasional first-person shooting stage and the run-and-gun, forced-scrolling levels. If you're a fan of that old-school SEGA style, featured so prominently in more readily remembered titles like Altered Beast, Golden Axe and Streets of Rage, Alien Storm could serve you well. But if you're only a casual fan of those comparison titles just listed, you're certainly safe to save your Wii Points and pass on a download of this one.